Official Report 139KB pdf
Welcome to the 10th meeting of the Enterprise and Culture Committee in 2003. I have apologies from Jamie Stone, whose flight was cancelled.
I appreciate that doing so is consistent with normal practice, as you said, but a number of committees are revisiting the issue. Did we not say at an early stage that we were going to think about the balance of items taken in public and in private? I accept that we are where we are with the draft report, but will there be an opportunity for us to think about the matter in line with the former Procedures Committee's recommendation on items in private, which a number of committees are considering?
I am happy to put an item on the agenda for next week if the committee wishes to have a debate on our general approach to the matter, if that would help to clear the air. The discussion would be not about the draft report on the Scottish solutions inquiry, but about our approach to reports in general.
The former Procedures Committee's general concern, which I share, was that, on balance, too much business was being transacted in private. One of the practices that the committee's report on the founding principles of the Scottish Parliament questions—and which many witnesses to that inquiry questioned—is considering draft reports in private, which is exactly what we are going to do. I could not remember where we had got to on the issue, if we had got anywhere on it, and I take the opportunity to flag it up for us to consider consciously at some stage—not necessarily next week—rather than just adopting past practice.
There is a debate on the former Procedures Committee's report in the chamber tomorrow afternoon and I suspect that the issue is one that will be raised then. We will leave it hanging on the wall at the moment and, if you wish to raise it with me again following tomorrow's debate, I will put it on the agenda for a future occasion. In the meantime, do we agree to take those items in private?